AMORIS LAETITIA: STRENGTHEN AND DEEPEN YOUR CONJUGAL AND FAMILY LOVE. HYMN TO CHARITY.
Dear brethren in Christ, below you have the first three paragraphs of Pope Francis’ Amoris Laetitia, chapter 4 on the Love in the Family which insists on the necessity to daily nurture and strengthen the love between spouses and among all the members of the family. Let us bring this beautiful Pauline hymn to charity often in our personal prayer and ask God to grant us the virtue of charity and the grace to live it in the small things of our family life.
+++ EXCERPT OF AMORIS LAETITIA NN. 89-91 STARTS HERE+++
- All that has been said so far would be insufficient to express the Gospel of marriage and the family, were we not also to speak of love. For we cannot encourage a path of fidelity and mutual self-giving without encouraging the growth, strengthening and deepening of conjugal and family love. Indeed, the grace of the sacrament of marriage is intended before all else “to perfect the couple’s love”.[104] Here too we can say that, “even if I have faith so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. If I give all I have, and if I deliver my body to be burned, but have not love, I gain nothing” (1 Cor 13:2-3). The word “love”, however, is commonly used and often misused.[105]
Our daily love
- In a lyrical passage of Saint Paul, we see some of the features of true love:
“Love is patient, love is kind;
love is not jealous or boastful; it is not arrogant or rude.
Love does not insist on its own way, it is not irritable or resentful;
it does not rejoice at wrong, but rejoices in the right.
Love bears all things, believes all things,
hopes all things, endures all things” (1 Cor 13:4-7).
Love is experienced and nurtured in the daily life of couples and their children. It is helpful to think more deeply about the meaning of this Pauline text and its relevance for the concrete situation of every family.
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ORIGINAL PHOTO SOURCE: I couldn’t find the name of the painter to give due credits. Image nevertheless is copied from http://theraccolta.tumblr.com/post/95594029118/the-nativity-of-our-lord.